Monday, June 29, 2009

Hey! I found the previous post I thought I lost.

I was so nervous last night that I didn't sleep very well. I just kept going over my presentation in my head. I kept thinking about it and thinking and thinking. I really didn't know what to expect.

I woke up, prepared to face the world (well DC at least) and left the Marriott in plenty of time to walk to the convention center. It was gorgeous outside, but hot. I came prepared with 3 laptops, speakers, pictures, etc. I trucked a lot over 4 blocks. (good thing my husband was there to help too)

I walked into the convention center and was met with a wall of people and let's say this... I should have taken the shuttle service. I was HOT!!! And underpressure with the people...

I went to my table, lucky #29. I quickly set up, hooked up to the ethernet cord, plugged into the power chords and turned up the speakers. I was ready to show my students' work (well what I could scrape up last night). Funny thing was... technology is always a character builder. Always.

I couldn't get my tablet to connect to the projector which was some sort of very neat white board by Prometheyn which I made note to check out later. Very cool stuff. The tablet was not allowed to be connected due to district securities, so like I wrote about last night I had to troubleshoot right then and there, quick on my feet and with a bright smile on my face because that wall of people I ran into when I first arrived at the center where circling the presenter booths.

Bottom line is that I was proud to talk about the growth my students have made as digital people and how proud I am to be an educator that will not accept status quo when it comes to creating digital people (including myself).

I wasn't able to showcase my students as much as I wanted to. Their Lake Ontario movies could not be shown which is a big bummer for me since that was the "awarded" grant project. Plus, I know how much time that was spent creating their movies. However, I was able to play their podcasts and show some of their other work on my Dell laptop.

Many people stopped and where interested in the actual information we found out in our study of Lake Ontario. As I stood sharing scientific data (as basic as it was) I couldn't believe that my students pulled off this type of science research. Science has not been a strong point for me and it is a place where I definitely need to grow. Really I couldn't believe I pulled off such a cool scientific project!!!